You're missing the scale.

Everyone knew BG3 would "a success," but it hasn't just been a success, it's been a nuclear bomb of a success.

Optimistically, people were expecting to get around 1 million in sales. Total. THAT would have been a GREAT SUCCESS. Today I think it has around 10 million on Steam alone, 10x the "hope we get there" number.

Imagine taking a job and hoping for a $10,000 bonus for good performance, and then your boss drops $100,000 on your desk. It's that level of joyful shock.

You don't need a distant science fiction MacGuffin for this. Every night you lay down and "die" for 8 hours or so, then your consciousness turns back on and you simply trust that it wasn't altered too much in the interim. We know very well that the way we think can change from one day to the other, so who's to say you're really the same person?

"You asked me what cake I like, then you didn't bake me that cake, then you were upset that I expressed disappointment that I didn't get the cake I said I liked after you asked me what I like"

is a metaphor for the more abstract concept of

"you prioritize your desire to impress me over actually pleasing me, and I do not recognize the importance appreciating your efforts even when they fall short, and both of us are too self-absorbed to understand the emotional needs of the other and make compromises so we can both feel loved"

I think that's been narrowed down to about 2 million years. But that got cut short by a mass extinction event, so it's hard to say how long they would have lasted otherwise.

There are no capital-G Gamers following Valorant.

Remember that video games are now the largest media industry in the world. Remember that gamergate happened almost 10 years ago now, and that Valorant is only 3 years old.

The kids playing and watching Valorant probably don't even know enough about the controversy to make the connection. They just know an asshole when they see one.

Honestly I don't even think capital-G Gamers play games anymore. It's an aging demographic that is too bitter and stupid to keep up.

Excuse me but you are interrupting my dopamine flow. Your response appears to be neither a meme, rage bait, justice boner, nor even a pun. I hope you learn from this experience and do better.

It reeks of immaturity in general, or maybe more cynically, the perception of a bunch of nerds that have never had a sex life. There are so few games that handle sexual and romantic relationships realistically, and now that we have one nobody knows what to make of it.

Some characters take things slow. Opening up gradually, sharing some wine, holding hands and enjoying a single kiss on a night alone together. Eventually this ramps up naturally.

Some characters on the other hand are like, "you ready to fuck? I'm ready. Love? Never heard of it."

Both of these are normal and it's cool to see both represented in the same world.

I think it's that the world has changed and left him behind. He was a racist misogynist 30 years ago, but back then the system enforced those things to his satisfaction. The systemic oppression of people he doesn't like has been challenged more and more over the past few decades, and he takes issue with that.

It makes sense for him to be the angriest "progressive" in the world if you think about it. All the progress we've made has been the things he DOESN'T want (metoo, BLM, etc) and none of the things he does want (healthcare, secularism)

This is why a lot of old people "become more conservative." No they don't. They just stew in their shitty comfort zones while the world around them moves forward.

Your basic gripe has been answered (and I'm really sorry if you're still struggling to skip the animation, it IS long), but just want to throw out here that "without any idea of the DC of the check" is an intended gameplay element.

You are supposed to look at the situation and try to guess how hard you think a thing would be. This is a hotly debated subject in tabletop, but Larian's position is clear - you don't get to know the DC until you're committed. Figuring out that intimidating the cave troll is a high DC is on you to infer from the situation. Some DMs don't tell players the DC at all, even after the roll. Some DMs don't even tell players whether or not they succeeded (which I think is really fun for things like Insight checks)

I think this one is pretty confined to my region (southwestern USA) but we use Otto as the moniker of a generic stupid person too, but probably for a different reason: Otto is Oblivious to the Obvious

Ada has been fairly aggressive in shaping her community on blahaj, so I think we'll see some splintering soon.

Logically there are two positions one can hold as a public LGBT (or any marginalized group) community:
Either we are first and foremost a safe space for our members, and will moderate aggressively to keep it that way
or
We are first and foremost the public face of this community, serving as a place for us to stage the culture war for our own safety and acceptance

Both of these are cool and make sense, but blahaj kind of fell accidentally into the second role due to the massive popularity of 196, while Ada really seems to want to cultivate the safe space instead. I'm sure the community is split, but time will tell just how deeply.

My unqualified prediction is that blahaj will intentionally obscure itself, get out of the limelight and try to focus itself more as a community of internal discussion and camaraderie for LGBT folks, and those who are unhappy with that will attempt to build a new 196 on an instance that is less curated.

It's legal and really a non-story. There's plenty of shit to be angry at GOPers about without writing misleading headlines.

Rich guy wants to run a political campaign, so he takes out loans to pay for it. At the same time, he asks for donations to support the campaign. Afterwards, he may use those donations to pay back the loans which were taken out to fund the campaign. What is the problem here? This is just how funding works.

The story is written as though he is being deceptive, when in reality all he is saying is that he doesn't expect the donations he receives to line up with the amount of money he took out in loans to fund the campaign. That's fine, he's just paying for it out of his own pocket.

What WOULD be an issue is if these loans that he took out specifically for campaigning were misappropriated and allocated for personal use. THAT is illegal. But as of yet there is no proof of that, just whining that he's rich enough to pull a bunch of money out the bank for a campaign (which is a problem with the system, but not really with him as an individual)